More comment – Page 48
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Opinion Pieces
Letter from the US: The robo-race starts
Robo-advisers are gaining ground in the US retirement industry. Their success will have an impact on the market, accelerating the shift of assets out of actively managed funds and into index funds
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Opinion Pieces
Guest Viewpoint: Peter Kraneveld – International Pensions Adviser
“Let’s stop using the term de-risking altogether and use the right words for what we are doing”
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Book ReviewBook review: Ambachtsheer's 'The Future of Pension Management'
IPE editor Liam Kennedy reviews Keith Ambachtsheer’s latest book on the pensions industry
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Features
Breaking Germany’s mould
Federal civil servants at two government ministries are searching for a workable policy to promote occupational pensions
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Opinion Pieces
Letter from Brussels: Beefing up the CMU
Inadequacy of European national court systems in the financial sphere is due for overhaul. Upgrade is necessary if the EU’s capital markets union programme (CMU) is going to get anywhere, according to a high-status paper
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Features
Negative rates are truly negative
It is instructive to remember that only a few years ago it was common for negative interest rates to be dismissed as impossible.
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Opinion Pieces
Letter from the US: The Yale effect
Good things come in small packages. It sounds so true reading the latest annual National Association of College and University Business Officers (NACUBO) Commonfund study of endowment performance.
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Features
Appeasing the gatekeeper
Last year I attended a drinks reception organised by a UK consultancy. The event was arranged specifically to allow the firm’s staff to meet with the asset management community. The theme running through the opening remarks was simple: “We have no current or future plans to offer fiduciary management, therefore we will never compete with you.”
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Opinion Pieces
Long-Term Matters: A climate culture clash
The Netherlands and the US are both free-market countries with thriving financial industries. But they also are very different and this is an unrecognised risk for large US mutual fund managers.
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Opinion Pieces
Guest Viewpoint: Heribert Karch, MetallRente
A few months ago, if someone had asked me to tell them about Deutschland-Rente (Germany-pension), I would have attempted to explain our state pension system to them
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Features
ABP open season
Would you set up an ABP now if you were creating a public sector pension regime from scratch for the Netherlands? The simplicity of a single scheme and the economies of scale in investment and administration all call for it. But other factors speak against
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Features
Stop monkeying around
Twenty years ago it made sense to use Chinese new year as a peg to discuss investing in China. A decade ago it had worn thin. To do it this year was a sign of hopeless naivety.
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Features
High-yield bonds: Expect dispersion
Last year was a difficult one for high-yield bond investors, particularly in the US, driven by a collapse in metals and mining on top of the decline in oil prices
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Opinion Pieces
Long-Term Matters: Value corrosion
Imagine ISIS had poisoned a US city, causing almost certain permanent damage to innocent infants and children. Can you imagine the likely domestic and international repercussions?
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Opinion Pieces
Letter from Brussels: Race to upgrade EFSI
Legislative moves to support the EU’s European Fund for Strategic Investments (EFSI) are being rushed through Brussels. But, so far, evidence of any torrent of fund movement by the institutional investment sector across EU frontiers has yet to emerge.
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Opinion Pieces
Letter from the US: In search of balance
A woman leads one of the US pension funds most committed to long-terminism. She is Theresa J Whitmarsh, executive director of the Washington State Investment Board (WSIB), managing over $100bn (€89bn) of state pension, insurance, and other assets. She is also an advocate for a better gender balance in the financial industry, especially in the private equity sector.
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Opinion Pieces
Guest Viewpoint: Chris Woods - FTSE Russell
“If China were to be classified as an emerging market today, the impact would be substantial”
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Features
Is your roof fixed?
With market volatility, oil price falls, interest rate increases in the US and QE in Europe, the investment landscape has rarely looked so clouded
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Opinion Pieces
Letter from Brussels: A simmering conflict
Conflict continues to simmer over the issue of passport rights for non-EU-domiciled hedge funds across the EU
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Features
Keep politics out of pensions
Pension funds and asset managers should focus more on their role of providing retirement income and less on political questions. Indeed, it would be best if the pensions industry ditched entirely what has become known as ESG (environmental, social and governance).
